tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-144746312016-12-08T12:05:38.799-05:00Sippican CottageSippican Cottage. Cottage Furniture Maker From Maine.
A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everythingSippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.comBlogger2796125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-14773301914348134542016-11-23T09:38:00.001-05:002016-11-23T09:38:24.702-05:00Annually, Not Oftener<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M8IxVknUcaQ/WDWpSkedq4I/AAAAAAAAGCI/ESFUnCQuIRsFCpeCl51n2DkeCvWv-_pzwCLcB/s1600/thanksgiving%2Bleyendecker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M8IxVknUcaQ/WDWpSkedq4I/AAAAAAAAGCI/ESFUnCQuIRsFCpeCl51n2DkeCvWv-_pzwCLcB/s640/thanksgiving%2Bleyendecker.jpg" width="478" /></a></div><br /><i>Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for -- annually, not oftener -- if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.</i>&nbsp; -- Mark Twain<br /><br /><br />SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-88683618799442678222016-11-15T10:23:00.000-05:002016-11-15T10:26:54.176-05:00A Kingdom Where the Sky Is Burning<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="412" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/18543247?portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="549"></iframe> <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-56yHz909lKI/WCsn4lnc7dI/AAAAAAAAGB4/XJzQe2hr50wBBcydChlCLrvV5fSZl9ofACLcB/s1600/sunset%2Bover%2Bkents.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-56yHz909lKI/WCsn4lnc7dI/AAAAAAAAGB4/XJzQe2hr50wBBcydChlCLrvV5fSZl9ofACLcB/s640/sunset%2Bover%2Bkents.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />I told you what I was going to do. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-88729210784697042372016-11-14T07:24:00.000-05:002016-11-14T07:24:00.872-05:00Come For Leon Russell On The Piano. Stay for Glen Campbell On the Banjo<br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tbKHbcvRMiM" width="549"></iframe> <br />You know, the squares make all the best music. Always have, always will. The hipsters don't practice. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-77807836145742251902016-11-10T09:17:00.000-05:002016-11-10T09:17:19.230-05:00It Kept Her Alive and Me Too<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser/> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--> <br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser/> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--> <h3 class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LJW8xHhLtg0/WCR_xDiNn5I/AAAAAAAAGBo/3uSkZsV_tVkuHgmSplVtgWJ2TEoZi6zhwCLcB/s1600/onethousandandone125x1650.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LJW8xHhLtg0/WCR_xDiNn5I/AAAAAAAAGBo/3uSkZsV_tVkuHgmSplVtgWJ2TEoZi6zhwCLcB/s640/onethousandandone125x1650.png" width="435" /></a></h3><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;;">A Thousand and One</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">&nbsp;</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">GRANPA TOLD ME</span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">all about the genie in the lamp.</span></div><div class="NoSpacing" style="mso-pagination: lines-together; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>It's the oldest story ever and came from the land of sand and the women with only eyes for you. It's in there, the genie of everything, but you have to find him and figure out how to let him out. He seems fussy but if you keep it simple and use your head he pops up like a daisy. Then he's out and you have to figure out what to do with him. Granpa says he's some kind of wonderful but as dumb as a stump, just like all of us. He can do anything but doesn't know what to do on his own. He needs guiding.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>The lamp is always hidden in plain sight he says. Men go prospecting all over the landscape for the easy riches but they're generally lying right there on the ground for you to step over in your hurry and scurry to look for them. Granpa points to the men through the door of the grog shop and they're playing cards and Granpa says what good would it do for them to find the riches anyway.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>In the library Granpa takes the books down from the high shelves that kids aren't meant to get at because the words in them are too dear to waste on such as us. He told me to run my hands over the cloth on the cover to see if it was the real deal inside. They don't waste the real nubbly cloth on the fakers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>The lady at the desk didn't like it but Granpa shushed her and we went home and opened that genie book but only so far. A book is like a man, Granpa says. You have to hold them both in respect. You can only bend a book or a man so far until they can't take it no more and then their back breaks.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" /><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>Granpa says there’s lots of men been bent back too far nowadays. They got told the only thing they could do didn’t need doing anymore, and it broke them open and their hearts fell right out. They try to fill the hole with all sorts of things but nothing suits. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>People act like thieves in reverse and put the broken books back on the shelf like nothing happened, but you can always tell because neither a man or a book can ever stand up straight any more after that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>Granpa said a body only needs a crust of bread today, it’s true, but without at least the hope of a loaf tomorrow you’re a goner. Scheherezade told that Sultan all those stories night after night and it kept her alive and me too.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Palatino Linotype&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">[From <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Cows-Sippican-Cottage/dp/1463673493" target="_blank"><i>The Devil's In the Cows</i></a>. All rights reserved} </span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span>SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-1752975618631096822016-11-09T10:43:00.001-05:002016-11-14T19:03:50.785-05:00Lipstick on an Arrow Shirt, Axle Grease on a Poodle Skirt, We're Gonna Go, Go, Go<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=2993185158/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 442px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://unorganizedhancock.bandcamp.com/track/go-go-go">Go, Go, Go! by Unorganized Hancock</a></iframe> <br />Oh yeah, you betcha.<br /><br />[Update: Many thanks to Thomas M. for his generous contribution to our PayPal tipjar, and for the message he sent along with it. It is very much appreciated]<br />[Additional Update: Many thanks to our friend Julie C. from Florida for buying my boy's Go! Go! Go! song, and leaving a big, fat tip. It is much appreciated]<br />[Yet More Updates: Many thanks to Philip M. for buying the boys' song, and for leaving a big, fat tip. It is much appreciated] SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-12856672051460238262016-11-05T11:18:00.001-04:002016-11-05T11:24:19.578-04:00Minor Swing By Minors<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nf7TXYmhjWo?rel=0" width="560"></iframe> <br /><br /><i>Minor Swing</i> might be Django Reinhardt's most recognizable tune. I like Django's music, so I was especially pleased when my kids took a whack at it. This video is sort of a documentary. They pointed the camera at themselves, slung two mikes in view, and let fly. It's the equivalent of turning in a homework assignment. This video is more than two years old. The big one isn't a minor anymore, and the little one is six inches taller. They both play better than this now. They don't play very often, I'm afraid.<br /><br />This is the most popular video the kids have ever made, if you go by YouTube views. Well, what else would you go by? It recently passed 20,000 views, for reasons I understand with a certain amount of contempt.<br /><br />I live in two worlds. One has www in front of it. I must admit I don't like the imaginary place that's become the ironclad version of reality for most people. The jackanapes who rule the Friendface planet are the worst people extant, if you ask me. By the way, if you're reading this, you asked me.<br /><br />I don't like the invertebrates who run the Intertunnel. I've decided they need a name. Let's coin the term right here and now: The Wobblies. The <i>Website Wankers of the World </i>have united into a Voltron of suck, and they rule this alternate ecosystem that's taken over the real world. They don't care if anything productive happens in the brave new world they've created. As long as they lord over the nonproduction, of course.<br /><br />Anyway, IIRC, this is the first video the boys ever made that got a downvote on YouTube. It's got 322 upvotes and 2 downvotes now. I remember pointing out their first downvote to my children. I thought it was a notable thing.<br /><br />I explained the motive behind it. I told them they couldn't always trust upvotes. Many people upvote everything for reasons that have nothing to do with quality. All of my children's contemporaries, for instance, can't sing or play their musical instruments, but are constantly told they are wonderful. Audiences are assembled for them, mostly in school, and they receive applause, and it's all fake. People sit still and then applaud, but it's only because it's over and they can stop listening. Sooner or later, this endless stream of fake enthusiasm tempts the unwary to "follow their passion" and perform in front of strangers who aren't in on the Wobbly gag. They discover quickly that&nbsp; the world is a very harsh place, they get the tomatoes, and they wonder where they went off the rails. Of course they didn't go off the rails. The railroad just doesn't go anywhere.<br /><br />Wobblies are Philistines. They know right from wrong, harmony from discordance, good from bad -- but they deliberately choose bad, every time. That's why I thought this video was a success. It was the first time someone knew my kids were good, and went out of their way to let them know they hated them for it.SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-5361325819842341722016-10-22T11:24:00.000-04:002016-10-22T12:32:17.331-04:00Ten Years Old<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ckzcDAjyooI?rel=0" width="560"></iframe> <br />You know, the drummer was only 10 years old in that video. Not 10 years old like 10 years and 364 days, either. He was 10.<br /><br />He's not 10 any more. He's gotten big for his age, so no one gets the extra frisson that they got when you could only see the top of his head behind the drums. He looks older than his 13 years now. He plays even better, but he's always been good.<br /><br />I said it at the time, and upon reflection, I'll say it again: He was the best 10-year-old drummer in the world. I have no idea why the world wasn't particularly interested in him or his brother. They were <i>rara avises</i>, man. He was playing for folding money, for hours at a time, when he was 10. Hell, I think big brother was only 17 at the time. He was performing live with only a 10-year-old drummer to back him up. I ask again, why did the world not care about them much? I still don't get it. This video has 800 views. If they had stepped on a rake while recording it with their phone held vertically, it would have gotten 800,000. Ah well, that's the way of the world, and we must live in it. <br /><br />You might not notice it, but he was exhausted when this song was filmed. It was fairly late at night. My kids were supposed to play in the afternoon, but the gig got postponed over and over because of monsoon rains. Biblical rain. We go to music jobs early, because I've taught my children to act professionally right from the get-go. We sat in our van, listening to drops like dinner plates hammer the roof, ate our bag lunches, and waited. The job kept getting put off. The nice people who hired us offered to pay us and send us home, but we said we'd signed up to do a job, and we'd do it. We waited some more, and then drove to a local fast-food restaurant, sat in the van, and ate that. Then we waited some more. The kids didn't play until 8 hours after we left our house.<br /><br />The crowd was really enthusiastic and pleasant. They were sophisticates. They were art college students from New York City. They were pleasantly surprised that my older son had a repertoire of hipster-compliant songs like this one to play. Their enthusiasm turned into an extra hour of performance.<br /><br />Watch the little man. His arms are like lead. He's been playing for two hours straight. He was waiting in a car for eight more before that. This was the latest he'd ever been awake, never mind playing. Watch his eyes at the one-minute-and-twenty-five-second mark.<br /><br />That's my boy. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-30248982837259306622016-10-19T09:36:00.002-04:002016-10-19T09:36:59.154-04:00Let's Hear It For the Diminutive King of the Franks<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZLYGu5FRulM?rel=0" width="560"></iframe> <br /><br />I know they didn't intend it that way, but Steely Dan lyrics are like a torture device for Japanese singers. Forget melisma. They don't have dipthongs. Steely Dan is a dipthong factory. The song starts with <i>while</i>, for gosh sake. Sake, not <i>sake</i>, I meant.<br /><br />Did Steely Dan ever dream they'd be a champion in their eyes? They said they did, obliquely, anyway. They testified under oath that angular banjos sounded good to them. But you always hurt the ones you love, don't you? <i>Careful what you carry</i> is borderline cruel, dudes.<br /><br />The band is uber-Japanese. No, they're not in a cab. They <i>apologize </i>in the YouTube description of the video. So much face. So little time:<br /><blockquote>Sorry for a mistake in the interlude guitar solo. We will update the song soon.</blockquote><br />It's just another thing that Steely Dan got exactly right for the Rising Sun market. I imagine that many a session guitarist looked at Becker and Fagen and said, "Sorry for the mistake in the interlude guitar solo," knowing full well it would be their last day on the job. <br /><br />Still, here we are. Steely Dan is worshiped a bit in Japan. They're not THE God. But they're gods, surely. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-2106310474453830152016-10-16T11:31:00.001-04:002016-10-16T11:46:19.015-04:00Needs More Kantela<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-rv1CTZSIU0?rel=0" width="560"></iframe> <br /><br />This is the greatest concert I've ever heard of. It makes Woodstock look like Monday night in a Chinese restaurant lounge in Milford, Mass. Don't ask me how I know what that's like.<br /><br />This video gets pulled from YouTube faster than I can keep up with it. The video quality in this one is set on Etch-A-Sketch through a periscope, but you get the idea. The whole thing is sublime.<br /><br />The main performers are a spoof. More to the point, they are a metaspoof. There's layers to it. They are pretending to be Russians who are pretending to be American. They're actually Finnish. If you know anything about Finland, you know how extraordinary this performance is. The concert in the video is from 1993. Think of that. Some Finns in a band called Sleepy Sleepers started mocking Mockba when the Soviet bear starting losing its fastball. Not long after, the Berlin wall came down and the world was a better place for everyone, especially Russians.<br /><br />Finns and Russians fought some wars, I tell you what. What you're watching is the implacable becoming placable. That's a real Russian military band performing with Finns in downtown Helsinki. It's glorious, every which way. To return to my comparison to Woodstock, it's as if the National Guard from Kent State sang backup for Hendrix with Nixon conducting.<br /><br />The band is the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_Cowboys" target="_blank"> Leningrad Cowboys</a>. I adore the description of the band in Wikipedia. Genre?<br /><ul><li>Comedy rock</li><li>Rock and roll</li><li>Hard rock</li><li>Heavy metal</li><li>Glam metal</li><li>Alternative metal</li><li>Industrial metal</li><li>Folk metal </li></ul>That's a lot of attempts to avoid admitting you have no idea what to call it.<br /><br />Rock music is stupid. Stop blustering. Admit it. C'mon. You know in your heart I'm right. You just don't want to admit it. Repeat after me: <i>It's stoopid</i>.<br /><br />Why can't you just embrace it? It's dumb, but it can be dumb fun. There's no dumber fun than <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2016/10/imagine-how-world-could-be-so-very-fine.html" target="_blank"><i>Happy Together </i></a>by the Turtles. You can tell The Turtles were trying to stretch the limits of banality they could pawn off as a pop song. <i>Me and you, and you and me...</i> The Fluorescent Leech and Eddie knew rock was dumb, and they loved it, and they took it up a notch or three.<br /><br />Finland's a big place without many people in it. Essentially, the entire country went to this show. No one was claiming they were going to save the world with three chords and some caterwauling. They simply noticed the world had already been saved, and had a party. And that party was a stone groove.&nbsp; SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-30856255552340162882016-10-13T08:10:00.003-04:002016-10-13T08:11:46.160-04:00Disneyland 1956<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/6016945?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <br />Before my time, but not ancient to me. I remember Old Walt holding court on Sunday nights on TV when I was a kid. For some reason, I mostly remember his clothes. He seemed to be nothing more than a delivery system for exactly 1/2" of white cuff showing and a pocket square, pure white.<br /><br />The park was always an abstraction to families like us. It was on the other end of the continent. That sort of vacation was foreign to us. It was something for really wealthy people, you know, like plumbers or car salesmen.<br /><br />The kids in the video all grew up and completely rejected the culture that produced them, and that built that park. Their children all go to the park. I assume they go alone, because they don't seem to have any kids. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-19688246373256670412016-10-12T22:05:00.001-04:002016-10-12T22:06:15.904-04:00It Touches My Foolish Heart<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t9UmfmxEUqU?rel=0" width="560"></iframe> <br />Rocky Gresset can play faster than anyone who can play better. He can play better than anyone who can play faster.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.discogs.com/Adrien-Moignard-Rocky-Gresset-Entres-Actes/release/4873139" target="_blank">Rocky Gresset</a>SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-17382570673463524642016-10-08T12:42:00.003-04:002016-10-08T17:04:38.258-04:00Torn From the Virtual Pages of the Maine Craigslist<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KTILYFjIhv0/T_7a36ZgiYI/AAAAAAAAEMo/iJxQaliI31UY5Gr8R8JUfxPgOVjLcVp4gCPcB/s1600/help%2Bwanted.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KTILYFjIhv0/T_7a36ZgiYI/AAAAAAAAEMo/iJxQaliI31UY5Gr8R8JUfxPgOVjLcVp4gCPcB/s400/help%2Bwanted.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />The Maine Craigslist is a hoot. It mostly features stuff for sale that the owner would be hard pressed to give away. In general, the prices look slightly higher to my eye than if the article in question was new. More than a few things look like something you'd have to pay folding money to get hauled away, so the owner is selling them instead.<br /><br />Maybe Craigslist is like that everywhere. How would I know? We mostly give away things when we don't use them anymore. It's not because we're wealthy. Just the opposite. Poor people, by definition, can't be cheapskates. There's nothing to part with, so there's nothing to part with grudgingly.<br /><br />Of course I featured the <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2016/05/meanwhile-in-maine.html" target="_blank">Most Maineiest Maine Thing in the Maine Craigslist</a> already. It was a tank.I don't need a tank, so I'm out of the running. Don't get me wrong; I <i>want</i> a tank. I just don't <i>need</i> a tank. But I bet someone did. There's a butt for every seat, as they say.<br /><br />This is in Craigslist today: <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lCGtWrE5X8E/V_kfCtibsTI/AAAAAAAAGAw/eejx2bCh58YTIzAR5PebwaJXjgRGOSpkACLcB/s1600/59%2Brambler%2Bcraigslist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lCGtWrE5X8E/V_kfCtibsTI/AAAAAAAAGAw/eejx2bCh58YTIzAR5PebwaJXjgRGOSpkACLcB/s400/59%2Brambler%2Bcraigslist.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ru8SdZ4fF9w/V_kfGLznehI/AAAAAAAAGA0/6MweSo15zKg9BjSZmbaf3Ct6rclkWFWdACLcB/s1600/59%2Brambler%2Bcraigslist%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ru8SdZ4fF9w/V_kfGLznehI/AAAAAAAAGA0/6MweSo15zKg9BjSZmbaf3Ct6rclkWFWdACLcB/s400/59%2Brambler%2Bcraigslist%2B2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RHnqZCex0_0/V_kfJJTRWkI/AAAAAAAAGA4/P3-9mEXxmYI6xCppEXS52cVJK9UPvbnxgCLcB/s1600/59%2Brambler%2Bcraigslist%2B3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RHnqZCex0_0/V_kfJJTRWkI/AAAAAAAAGA4/P3-9mEXxmYI6xCppEXS52cVJK9UPvbnxgCLcB/s400/59%2Brambler%2Bcraigslist%2B3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />That's a <a href="http://maine.craigslist.org/bar/5797531499.html" target="_blank">1959 Rambler American</a>. When I was little, my parents toted us around in a Rambler American station wagon, and I have a soft spot for it. I want that more than I want a tank.<br /><br />There's lots of reasons I want it. It's only 5 grand. I don't have five large, but it's not IPO-type money or anything. The number hangs around in my mind in the future cardfile, not the hereafter microfiche.<br /><br />I can fix that car. It doesn't need fixing right now, but if the ballast resistor blows, I know where to look for it. You can sit right in the engine compartment and work on the engine. In the winter you can leave it running while you bang on it. That's cozy.<br /><br />It's blissfully free of encumbering devices like seat belts. Fine with me I don't want to linger. Most of all, I want it more than a tank because there's more steel in a '59 Rambler than in a tank, so it has higher scrap value in the long run.&nbsp;&nbsp; SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-8148050763871208682016-10-07T10:25:00.001-04:002016-10-07T10:25:39.111-04:00Not The Same<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YMXDktggvPQ?rel=0" width="560"></iframe> <br />The Italian Secret Service. It's what's on the box at the Cottage.SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-55149109104259379312016-10-06T11:01:00.001-04:002016-10-06T12:45:30.463-04:00Imagine How the World Could Be, So Very Fine<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hIr1Rh_zO1o?rel=0" width="560"></iframe> <br /><br />So, happy together.<br /><br />This is rehearsal. There's no microphone. The Spare Heir uses a form of brushes to keep the volume down. They're like little bundles of sticks. You can't do things like <a href="http://vicfirth.com/38-single-ratamacue-2/" target="_blank">ratamacues </a>with them very effectively. It's not that important for rehearsal. <br /><br />The Heir doesn't use a microphone when they rehearse. I forbade a sonic arms race early on. It's in their bones now. They play as quietly as they can. The Heir just belts it out. His guitar is amplified only enough to be heard along with the drumming. It builds up your voice to sing like that. <br /><br />No one much understands the difference between practice and rehearsal. You practice to learn rudiments and new material. This is done on your own. You gather to rehearse to prepare to perform. You do not practice at rehearsal. Then you perform. You do not rehearse during a performance. My children do not practice, really. Well, I think The Heir does, but it's always classical piano.<br /><br />My kids rehearse like this to prepare for shows. All of their contemporaries can't or won't do the work necessary to perform in public. Other kids refuse to practice until an audience is assembled for them. One that can't leave. Other kids can never really rehearse, because they never practice. They can't perform properly, because they never rehearse. You can spot this species, and hear them, a mile away. They get in front of an audience of people who can't leave, and then noodle, i.e.: practice, at flight-deck volume, in between songs that weren't rehearsed.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.facebook.com/UnorganizedHancock" target="_blank">Unorganized Hancock</a> will be <i>performing</i> at the <a href="http://www.fryeburgfair.org/" target="_blank">Fryeburg Fair </a>on Sunday, October 9th. Three big shows, at 1PM, 2PM, and 3 PM, at the Draft Horse Park bandstand. Watch your step. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-79615311148813364962016-05-14T10:42:00.001-04:002016-10-02T06:40:51.254-04:00Wes Montgomery and Three Overmatched Strangers Play Four on Six<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="412" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zxTD1XQTcyk?rel=0" width="549"></iframe> Wes always smiles. He was one of the most genial musicians ever. He had a challenging life, so he always seemed glad to be there, no matter where there was. It beat his factory job, and he knew it.<br /><br />No one springs from Zeus' head without being an amalgamation of things that came before. That being said, Wes Montgomery came as close to inventing an original method of playing the guitar as anyone I can think of. It's the sort of thing that's born of endless work in obscurity for long periods. Wes used to play the guitar after he got home from his blue-collar job, and he didn't want to wake his wife and many kids. He used his thumb to gently strike the strings instead of a plectrum. It eventually led to half of his unusual sound.<br /><br />The rest of it was this triptych soloing method. It was also born of playing alone for long periods. First comes a melody. Then he doubles it. Then he plays it passing through block chords. When you hear it, you think, "That's Wes Montgomery, or someone trying to sound like Wes Montgomery." He was trying to sound like more than one person at a time, and he didn't play the piano.<br /><br />The fellows are Europeans coalesced from whoever's handy. They're not prepared for the tempo, or the hole they have to fill when it's their turn to solo. Wes just smiles. He's familiar with playing with inferior talent, but soldiering on regardless. He played alone for a long time, and he must have been inferior for a few minutes, surely.<br /><br />[Update: Many thanks to longstanding friend Russell D.in Maryland for his generous support via our PayPal tipjar. It is very much appreciated]<br /><br />[Further Update: Many thanks to our friend Bill O in Tejas for his generous support via our PayPal tipjar. It's very much appreciated]<br /><br />[Further Update: Many thanks to Thomas M. in Texas for his generous support via our PayPal tipjar. It is very much appreciated] SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-33965271129434333092016-05-13T09:43:00.001-04:002016-05-13T09:52:45.141-04:00A Maine Spring<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AHlun0c4B78/VzXYaLRzHbI/AAAAAAAAF_g/Fq0iTdkjolE3V9ghQIK0QIoBChFBZ1HjwCLcB/s1600/the%2Bspare%2Bheir%2Bdigs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AHlun0c4B78/VzXYaLRzHbI/AAAAAAAAF_g/Fq0iTdkjolE3V9ghQIK0QIoBChFBZ1HjwCLcB/s640/the%2Bspare%2Bheir%2Bdigs.jpg" width="484" /></a></div><br />A Maine Spring is like bankruptcy. It occurs first very slowly, then all at once.<br /><br />Early Spring is dreary. There are hangdog snowbanks here and there, slinking around in the shadows like teenagers outside a liquor store. The passing of the snow reveals the dirty landscape underneath. The ground has a hide of pasty russet leaves and trash lobbed out a car window. The world's color palette lingers in the crack between Payne's Grey and tanbark. Green will be a fever dream of heaven for many weeks.<br /><br />I make the mistake of predicting leaves on the trees for weeks on end. "Tomorrow there will be leaves." It never happens. Then one morning you get up and look across the fallow field, past the highway that snakes along the river, and see a battalion of birches with an aureole of pure sap green, right from the tube. After that, the world falls off a green cliff.<br /><br />It's the fog, you know. It's cool at night, always. There was ice in the birdbath three days ago. The sun has trouble shrugging it off in the morning, and a fine mist hangs on the ground like a comforter until sol wins out. The mist hurls down green shoots like a gauntlet.<br /><br />People wonder aloud why anyone would live where we do. I'm people, so I wonder, too. But the six months from late Spring to Autumn here in the western Maine hills is as sublime a climate as I've seen. It's crisp in the morning, warm in the afternoon, and cool at night, every night. You can completely regulate your temperature by opening and closing a window, or putting on or taking off one garment.<br /><br />If you ever wondered where the birds go, I don't. They're in my yard, living in the birdhouse you told me wouldn't work. The tree swallows jet all over the meadow, eating bugs and returning like a missile to their hole. Gold finches rocket overhead like buzzbombs. There's a mentally deficient robin named Kevin, who forgot to follow his fellows further north, who bangs on our window every morning, wondering if they're in there with us.<br /><br />You can't miss Spring, and you can't miss Spring. Our neighbor<a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2016/04/happy-birthday-mrs-king.html" target="_blank"> gave us a dresser</a>, so we gave him a birdhouse. My little son and I made it together. He painted it and nailed on all the trim. It had the look of a person's hand, a rare thing. My neighbor is a nice man and a good neighbor, and makes it tolerably tolerable to live here, too. We knew his birdhouse would linger longer on his desk than was wise to cadge a bird's eye for nuptials and nesting. We offered to put it on a post in his yard, for he is truly a busy man.<br /><br />He gave me another great gift, and let me take my son across the street to plant our flag of friendship in his yard. My little son dug the post hole, and we put in a post left over from shoring up our house. We screwed the little bird house on top of it in the lee of a forsythia bush just donning its trashy golden mantle. My son had dug a posthole for a birdhouse in our yard, so I wasn't totally stunned at his alacrity and efficiency. I was grateful for a chance to let our child do any sort of chore that would push his walk towards being a man forward even one step.&nbsp; <br /><br />The next day -- the very next day -- my neighbor sent us pictures of the bird that had moved into the house. It reminded me that Spring, and a boy becoming a man, occurs first very slowly, then all at once.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QW3O5Vl-7U8/VzXYjM6l0fI/AAAAAAAAF_k/8Fp42piJoCci5b15zDPuY5Yx2i00ctQegCLcB/s1600/tenants.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QW3O5Vl-7U8/VzXYjM6l0fI/AAAAAAAAF_k/8Fp42piJoCci5b15zDPuY5Yx2i00ctQegCLcB/s640/tenants.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-36823355025986086052016-05-02T13:53:00.002-04:002016-05-02T14:41:54.621-04:00Meanwhile, In Maine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u9k-1hHng2o/VyeN50BOCMI/AAAAAAAAF_Q/ViYu3pBOPD4WtOgHuayOnStdOsdBi83UwCLcB/s1600/The%2BMaine%2BEconomy%2Bat%2Ba%2BGlance.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u9k-1hHng2o/VyeN50BOCMI/AAAAAAAAF_Q/ViYu3pBOPD4WtOgHuayOnStdOsdBi83UwCLcB/s640/The%2BMaine%2BEconomy%2Bat%2Ba%2BGlance.png" width="323" /></a></div>I live in Maine. Maine is, how does one say it -- different.<br /><br />I don't pretend to understand Maine. I just live here and get along as best I can. As far as I'm concerned, Maine lets me sleep on the state's couch, so it would be impolitic of me to start complaining about the accommodations. It's like being Maine's indie-rock drummer. Anyway, I just look on in wonder, and wonder.<br /><br />Last week, a guy that I don't know, but know people who know him, tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head. Three times. With a flare gun. While parked by the side of the road. In his truck. Which runs on propane, for some reason. He didn't die, because two passing motorists saw him and pulled him out of his burning truck. Because Maine.<br /><br />Every single person in Maine owns a gun, but no one ever shoots anyone else. They won't even shoot themselves with a gun. They generally commit suicide by texting and driving.<br /><br />The classified ads are a little different around here:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AOTPTFJhqSM/VyeKEEjTNMI/AAAAAAAAF_E/t3RPMqnsqOgAo8bwNO2Ar9IT3h4zKRu4QCLcB/s1600/Military_114_tank_-_2016-05-02_13.10.18.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="436" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AOTPTFJhqSM/VyeKEEjTNMI/AAAAAAAAF_E/t3RPMqnsqOgAo8bwNO2Ar9IT3h4zKRu4QCLcB/s640/Military_114_tank_-_2016-05-02_13.10.18.png" width="640" /></a></div><br />That's a real Craigslist ad. The fellow is selling his "tank." Needs cash. Don't we all?<br /><br />It's from far-southern Maine, at least compared to where I live. You can tell it's not from <i>real </i>Maine, because the ad is on Cragislist, not <a href="http://www.unclehenrys.com/" target="_blank">Uncle Henry's</a>. Real Mainahs use Henry's. No one actually sells anything, though. You can put anything in Uncle Henry's, but it will never sell. You'll just be swamped with calls offering to trade things for what you've got. I put a drum set in Uncle Henry's, and was offered everything in trade from firearms to boat motors. Everyone has everything but money in Maine.<br /><br />The syntax in the ad is pure Maine:<br /><blockquote>This is a rare demilitarized 114 tank runs and drives awesome 283 small-block Chevy engine has rubber inserts to drive on the street on the tracks make it any kind of tank you want will carry a 10000 pound pay load an right now the total weighs 7000 pounds all aluminium drive it right on a over the tire trailer an take it home u won't find one of theses last one I saw on ebay sold for 25k</blockquote>Of course it's not a tank. It's an armored personnel carrier, the M114. It was popular during the Vietnam war. Of course it was popular with the Viet Cong, not Americans, which is why a guy in Maine was able to buy one. It's made of aluminum. If you've ever gotten the urge to go to war with an overturned bass boat over your head and tank tracks under your feet, this is just the ticket. Some M114s were fitted with a Red Ryder-grade turret that made it nearly a tank, almost, kinda, sorta, but for the most part, you just shot back with whatever you had handy. Like a flare gun or something.<br /><br />Anyway, the advertisement buries the lede, as they say in the newspaper industry. I call it saving the best for last:<br /><blockquote>will take vintage Star Wars in partial trade&nbsp; </blockquote>So. Very. Maine.SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-19200874616385476102016-04-26T11:39:00.000-04:002016-04-26T12:59:31.309-04:00Things Are Different Today, I Hear Evry Muvah Say<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="309" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eN6dHOzlfd8?rel=0" width="549"></iframe> <br />I noticed this video was posted to YouTube three years ago, almost to the day. I notice all sorts of things..<br /><br />I can't help but notice that the cat is dead. I've noticed that my wife misses that cat. He lived forever, but not forever enough. It's a testament to how accustomed animals become to being around a family, and vice-versa, that he wanders in and out of a trap set and amplifiers and isn't spooked, and doesn't spook anyone, either.<br /><br />I noticed that if it was posted to YouTube on April 28th, 2013, that means that it was recorded well before that, because my boys' video editing rig has always been pretty barbarous, and it takes a long time to get anything out the door. That means it might have been recorded in late March, when <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/unorganizedhancock" target="_blank">the drummer was still nine years old</a>. Yikes. I noticed he's like four inches taller than his mother now.<br /><br />I especially noticed that the boys recorded this out on our front porch three years ago, nearly to the day, because it's been snowing here for the past three hours. SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-25436966407191888022016-04-23T15:13:00.000-04:002016-04-24T08:34:45.874-04:00Perfect Pitch and Perfect Suits<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="309" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VT9nalKKTdU?rel=0" width="549"></iframe> <br />Here's a video of my two children, AKA <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/unorganizedhancock" target="_blank">Unorganized Hancock</a>, appearing on <a href="http://z1055.com/" target="_blank">The Breakfast Club on Z 105.5</a> a couple of weeks ago. The host is a genial fellow named Matty. The woman's voice you hear in the background is Bonnie McHugh, the station manager, who took this video with her phone. She's a peach.<br /><br />The kids enjoy appearing on the show. Nice people like nice people, I guess. This is the third time they've been on. The radio station is over an hour away from our house, and the show is on early in the morning, so we have to roust the kids out of bed extra early to make it on time. You'll notice the young feller yawning and stretching to illustrate the hour. He has Perfect Pitch, sometimes known as Absolute Pitch. He can identify any note he hears without any other reference. He can even do it with ambient noises out in the world, like bird songs or sirens. They didn't get around to it in the video, but you can play multiple notes on the piano, and he can tell you all of them. It's a very unusual ability. Of course his father, in his infinite wisdom, taught him how to play the drums.<br /><br />My sons have a certain amount of aplomb, I must say. The little fellow, Garrett, is about to be put on the spot, but he's never nervous before a show. When he was only ten, the boys played under a little tent outside the <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2013/08/live-from-skowtown-jail-its-unorganized.html" target="_blank">Pickup Cafe in Skowhegan, Maine</a>. They played one set, and then took a breather. There was a little courtyard behind the restaurant where the kids took their break. When they returned, the little fellow handed my wife one of his teeth. He had pulled it out while they waited around. Then he sat down and did the second set.<br /><br />The big one is poised, too. He does get nervous before shows, but he doesn't reveal it. I can tell, though. The boys entered a contest sponsored by Z 105 and the Lewiston-Auburn Fighting Spirit hockey team to write their fight song. There was a battle of the bands to decide the winner. Miles, the big one, had mononucleosis, and was very sick during the weeks before the show. His first day out of bed in three weeks, he appeared on Z 105, and the next day, he played at the Lewiston Colisee, <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2015/08/unorganized-hancock-gets-their-wings.html" target="_blank">and the boys won the contest.</a> No one knew he had been sick. But I knew what an effort it was for him. <br /><br />After the Perfect Pitch interview you see in this video, the radio station hired Miles. I knew they were nice people. Now I know they're smart people, too.<br /><br /><iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=2993185158/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://unorganizedhancock.bandcamp.com/track/go-go-go">Go, Go, Go! by Unorganized Hancock</a></iframe> [Update: Many thanks to Donald P. from California for his generous contribution to our PayPal tipjar. It is much appreciated]SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-88671813281618664972016-04-22T09:47:00.000-04:002016-04-22T16:10:55.185-04:00The Genuine Article<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="309" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hj6OyIh7GAI?rel=0" width="549"></iframe> <br /><br />I prefer my lugubrious fuzz-wah guitar playing to be accompanied by good singing, thanks. Sly Stone is Ray Charles from Saturn.SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-21899277108906445562016-04-20T12:05:00.001-04:002016-04-20T12:42:07.779-04:00Happy Birthday, Mrs. King<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5Y20IAVfsXs/VxekkGDY_eI/AAAAAAAAF-k/tM-SoNzs0VcDSqxxli9EUOc4X7JJF90HACLcB/s1600/Before%2Bdresser%2Bside.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5Y20IAVfsXs/VxekkGDY_eI/AAAAAAAAF-k/tM-SoNzs0VcDSqxxli9EUOc4X7JJF90HACLcB/s640/Before%2Bdresser%2Bside.JPG" width="480" /></a></div>[If you just stumbled in, or have very poor short term memory, I am <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2016/04/how-festival-of-trash-saved-my-bacon.html" target="_blank">recounting the story </a>of a free clothes dresser we rescued from the curb during our town's Festival of Trash]<br /><br />My wife's abandoned dresser didn't stay on the lawn very long. An old feller pulled up in a pickup truck while the boys from across the street were still carrying bits of it out of the house. He tried to mangle it into his truck by himself. He thought he was in luck when the kids helped him load it, but of course he had no idea that the dresser was made in Beelzebub's Country Classics Furniture Factory. My wife, bless her soul, tried to warn him that all that glitters isn't glitter, but he wasn't interested. He was a man newly smitten who wasn't appropriately curious about exactly how the new object of his affections became someone else's furniture version of an ex-wife. Good luck, my unwary friend.<br /><br />A sense of urgency had now crept into the proceedings. My wife's clothing collection is somewhat meager, but it looked much more extensive now that it was on the loose in our bedroom. Steps must be taken. Her new bureau must be pressed into service sooner than later.<br /><br />The boys had deposited the old ark in my basement workshop. It was already after lunch. I began to take a real interest in the thing, mostly because I had to. It couldn't be one of those projects that lingers languidly over the years, waiting for a supply of free time to make its appearance. I once had free time, back when Johnson was president, if memory serves. You'll be glad to learn it wasn't Andrew Johnson.<br /><br />I needed to understand this wooden beast properly, or I feared I'd end up like the guy who was currently listening to the shrieking drawers in my wife's old dresser. I looked for clues. The drawers were lined with newspaper from 1960, which were a hoot to read. That sort of clue works on TV, but in the real world it just means the dresser was <i>at least</i> that old.<br /><br />The style looked postwar to my eye. It was sort of colonial without being slavish. The grain was mostly obscured by the muddy brown finish, but it looked like maple, which has bland grain. It was stupid heavy, though, so I knew it was birch. Birch was cheaper than maple back then, and got used in normal people's furniture a lot. The dresser was made in a factory, but not a modern sort of factory. More like a workshop with a bunch of people in it. It still looked like humans had made it.<br /><br />The drawers were dovetailed front and back. That's pretty old school. I decided to stop using my spider sense to determine the age of the thing, and looked in the drawers instead. I found the spot where my neighbor's big brother had written his name and the number 1943 in it. It might not have been brand new in 1943, of course, but hey, close enough.<br /><br />The finish had been subject to extremes of sunlight and temperature and humidity. Not left outdoors, but I figured an attic or something. My neighbor later told me that it was left on an enclosed porch for many years. Bingo. The finish was missing here and there, but what there was looked like suede when you ran your finger across it. It was completely crisscrossed with fingermarks going every which way. I pawed at it a bit, running through the rusty filing cabinet of my mind to figure out what I was looking at. It came to me in a vision -- all at once.<br /><br />I knew it was shellac. Of all the dumb luck. No one had "fixed" this piece of furniture in 75 years. It didn't have any new, improved finish that wouldn't last but couldn't be fixed. It wasn't "eco," another word for wasteful useless disposable plastic crap. The finish was made from the nasty ooze that comes out of a lac bug and dries on a tree branch. Your favorite Hindoo used to gather the stuff by putting tarps on the ground under trees where the lac bugs congregate, and then beating the limbs with sticks to make the amber flakes rain down. When you mix lac leavings with alcohol, you get shellac. It's wonderful stuff.<br /><br />Shellac sticks to anything. Anything sticks to shellac. Shellac can be diluted till there's barely a whisper of lac left in it, but it still makes a coherent film. It seals knots. Shellac can be polished to mirror shine if you want to. A technique called French polishing is the finish you saw on Baron Percy Devonshire Smythe XXIVth's harewood and mahogany gaming table back when King George was still gibbering on his throne. You can make shellac look like anything you want. Our dresser had pigment mixed in with it to make a kind of varnish stain that could be sprayed on in one coat as an all-purpose stain/finish.<br /><br />Shellac is so safe for humans to handle that you can eat it, and you might have. They used to make the capsules that drugs and vitamins come in out of shellac. And the greatest thing about shellac, at least for me, is that no matter how old it is, it immediately dissolves and gets loose in the presence of alcohol, just like everyone at your office Christmas party.<br /><br />My wife and I play a game. We talk about what we might accomplish if we had twenty-five bucks. I always come up with things like fixing one of many leaks in the roof with one bundle of shingles, while her mind wanders to a new shower curtain and rod, or something of the sort. We put our ideas into practice whenever fortune favors us with a quarter of a C note. It's amazing how much pleasure you can bring into your life with a little sum if you set your mind to it. I set my mind to it.<br /><br />I brought my 13-year old to the hardware store with me. That makes it a pleasure excursion instead of a chore. He made me stop on the way home at the waterfall, where we sat on the battered bole of a 75-foot tree that had drifted down the river and washed up on the granite ledge. We watched the water roar for a happy moment, and it didn't even eat into our twenty-five bucks. Here's what we bought:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XjW1Eo0x9Z0/VxedQTdWTnI/AAAAAAAAF94/IJhxqSJpqt0_59Cz1GMEy-ALYZs6mEzygCLcB/s1600/Dresser%2BCleaning%2Btools-4-19-2016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XjW1Eo0x9Z0/VxedQTdWTnI/AAAAAAAAF94/IJhxqSJpqt0_59Cz1GMEy-ALYZs6mEzygCLcB/s640/Dresser%2BCleaning%2Btools-4-19-2016.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />That's about all we would need. I could scrounge whatever else was necessary from around the house. I let my boy remove all the knobs, so that he could be part of his mother's gift. Then we got to work. I poured alcohol into the spray bottle, misted the top of the piece of furniture, and then misted it again until it stayed wet-looking. Then I unwrapped a piece of steel wool, re-wrapped it into a flat pad, and went back and forth on the surface. The shellac quickly became a kind of porridge, which I wiped off with the paper towels. In a few minutes, the top was clean.<br /><br />There was a lot of elbow grease involved, but it was easy work because it was effective, and showed continual progress, which is important to avoid discouragement. I went over every surface, laying the furniture down flat whenever I could to make a very shallow swimming pool for the alcohol instead of a waterfall. Keeping it wet is important, because alcohol evaporates very quickly, and when it does, you're back to the beginning. After an hour or two, here's what it looked like:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BV7RtJnzgvI/VxefEYrimkI/AAAAAAAAF-E/hB1IdFz9znwber_7cnt0n3vsvzMokVunACLcB/s1600/Dresser%2Bshellac%2Bfinish%2Bremoved-4-19-2016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BV7RtJnzgvI/VxefEYrimkI/AAAAAAAAF-E/hB1IdFz9znwber_7cnt0n3vsvzMokVunACLcB/s640/Dresser%2Bshellac%2Bfinish%2Bremoved-4-19-2016.JPG" width="480" /></a></div>It looked kind of blah, of course, but it was clean. If you refer back to my comment about shellac retaining its ability to cohere no matter how much you thin it out, you'll understand that even though the dresser looks stripped, it's really just very thinly shellacked. It's sealed enough for a coat of finish, if that's the way you wanted to go. I could stain (dye) it if I wanted, but that would add days of work I didn't have. I put my thinking cap on.<br /><br />Now is the part of the proceeding where the expert on TV mumbles, "And then a miracle occurs," and then shows you the finished product in the next scene. Well, I might own next to nothing, but everything I do own is useful. I went rooting around on the shelves, and found this:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1jVLO4nJat4/VxegJQqNv5I/AAAAAAAAF-M/8D0zZtmEKUsMPrPW7bv22SDV0jmURKWbQCLcB/s1600/Dresser%2BBriwax%2Bfinish-golden%2Boak-4-19-2016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1jVLO4nJat4/VxegJQqNv5I/AAAAAAAAF-M/8D0zZtmEKUsMPrPW7bv22SDV0jmURKWbQCLcB/s640/Dresser%2BBriwax%2Bfinish-golden%2Boak-4-19-2016.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />I bought this tub of Briwax in 1986. I was working for a rich A-hole on Cape Cod at the time. His carpenters had installed the kind of elaborate built-in closet interiors that are common today but mostly unknown then. They were fabricated in place from birch plywood and solid maple trim, and then finished with varnish. They were as rough as sandpaper, and he wasn't happy. Like an idiot, they asked me how to fix it, and I told them to sand with emery cloth and then wax with fine steel wool applicators. Lucky me, they let me put the rich guy's money where my mouth was, and I spent half the summer rubbing the insides of closets. I still had a half empty container of the pigmented wax I used. Golden Oak, if you're interested.<br /><br />The stuff never goes bad. I rubbed it all over using fine steel wool, and then buffed it with an old t-shirt. There was prodigious elbow grease involved, but the work wasn't really difficult. This is what it turned out like:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OQJgcJtvbeI/VxejQrGd1II/AAAAAAAAF-Y/MlHxUS2fUi4fmTMM_rbgAoCRcW5k3iieACLcB/s1600/After%2Bdresser%2Bphoto-4-19-2016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OQJgcJtvbeI/VxejQrGd1II/AAAAAAAAF-Y/MlHxUS2fUi4fmTMM_rbgAoCRcW5k3iieACLcB/s640/After%2Bdresser%2Bphoto-4-19-2016.JPG" width="480" /></a></div>I replaced a couple of drawer stops that were rattling around under the drawers, banged in a couple of nails that had worked loose, waxed the drawer runners with regular wax, and washed the inside of the drawers with Windex. I started the project after lunch, and was done at dinnertime.<br /><br />The thing smelled great, in addition to looking right smart. Shellac and wax is one of the oldest finishing methods for furniture there is, and one of the best. The next day, my older son and I carried the dresser upstairs in time for the birthday party, and we had a feast and a cake.<br /><br />Happy Birthday, Mrs. King.SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-22215211124975464162016-04-19T11:36:00.000-04:002016-04-22T10:38:00.978-04:00Grass Is Good as Carpet, Anyplace Is Fine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GhHf3nGLS5M/VxZLWM41_cI/AAAAAAAAF9o/y64wMO6s3lAiIWXerhoMj3Aln0ybqkqKQCLcB/s1600/Before%2Bdresser%2Btop-4-19-2016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GhHf3nGLS5M/VxZLWM41_cI/AAAAAAAAF9o/y64wMO6s3lAiIWXerhoMj3Aln0ybqkqKQCLcB/s640/Before%2Bdresser%2Btop-4-19-2016.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />When I mentioned that the <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2016/04/how-festival-of-trash-saved-my-bacon.html" target="_blank">Festival of Trash saved my bacon</a>, I wasn't kidding. It's my wife's birthday, and I gots no moneys. I don't even have a money. What was I going to do?<br /><br />People used to say, "The Lord will provide," and mean it. That led morons with opinions to deduce that the Christian religions consist of pulling a lever and out pops the candy. If no candy showed up, you'd lose your faith, or Richard Dawkins would call you a rube. Simple faith doesn't work like that.<br /><br />"The Lord will provide" really means that you're supposed to do everything in your power to help yourself, first and foremost, and then trust that the universe isn't entirely malignant, and maybe you'll catch a break. Assume the world is not entirely carpeted in banana peels. Don't expect every apple to have a fishing supply store in it. Don't mistake every pineapple for a hand grenade.<br /><br />The operative part of this faith that the world isn't out to get you in particular, just in general, brings a duty, not a benefit. Saying, "The Lord will provide," means you have to be on the lookout for good fortune that might come your way. You have to recognize it as an opportunity. It might come in disguise. It might come dressed up as a battered dresser:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-br07Dfzhb8g/VxZBBR4pa0I/AAAAAAAAF9Y/kWhos9XheVANe488FHJm0b9cOq9wmluXACLcB/s1600/Before%2Bdresser%2Bphoto%2B1-4-19-2016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-br07Dfzhb8g/VxZBBR4pa0I/AAAAAAAAF9Y/kWhos9XheVANe488FHJm0b9cOq9wmluXACLcB/s640/Before%2Bdresser%2Bphoto%2B1-4-19-2016.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />This is what the festival of trash offered up as my salvation. It might look light an old dresser to you, but it looked like redemption to me. One of my nearby neighbors, who is a hell of a guy, put this dresser out on the curb for the Festival of Trash. He also put out some easy chairs with a substantial mixture of duct tape in their DNA, a semi-lethal crib, some skis you could stand still on, and assorted other items jetsamic. My wife and I were standing in front of our house, unloading shipping pallets from my truck to leave as my offering for the Festival of Trash. My wife's nose went into the air like a wild animal on a scent. "Hey, lookit that."<br /><br />She made a beeline across the street. She's wanted a dresser. She's wanted a dresser, bad. She's wanted a dresser, real bad. She's wanted a dresser, real bad, since her husband bought her a real bad dresser about a dozen years ago.<br /><br />My wife had always done without stuff. Our life was always spent crawling upward and onward out of the primordial poverty ooze, and generally being pushed back in by people that can't be bothered to worry about every undercapitalized business in the country. We never really had any disposable income we could trust. I was self-employed, and worked day and night, but there was never any surety in it. We never bought much of anything, it seemed. <br /><br />Then I got a job, a real job. It lasted four years. I went from the lowest man on a very big totem pole to a division manager in three years. Just like now, my income started with a 1, but it had an additional zero for a change. It was time, finally, to buy my wife something.<br /><br />I bought her a dresser. It was a very expensive dresser, at least by my standards. I went to what I considered a fancy-pants furniture store, Ethan Allen, and bought a cherry Shaker dresser for my wife's birthday present. It was fool's gold furniture.<br /><br />That dresser was never right. I paid for delivery. They scratched it, which I wouldn't have done if I did it myself. I always seem to be paying people to do what I wouldn't do, but not in a good way. This is the basis of government and furniture delivery. We were faced with sending it back and waiting for them to bring a new one to scratch again, or putting up with it. Oh, it's not so bad, we lied to ourselves.<br /><br />I looked at it every day when I woke up, of course. I didn't make furniture then, but I knew what a Shaker chest of drawers should look like. I began to notice this one was stretched a bit. Too low, too long to be considered in proportion. It had the kind of drawer glides that you see in kitchen cabinets. They began to malfunction. The drawers got harder and harder to slide in and out. Unlike all our hand me down furniture, there was no way to wax the runners or anything. They were no-maintenance. That means "disposable" if you're telling the truth.<br /><br />The dresser was heavy without being strong. It was made from particle board covered with a thin cherry veneer. The finish was sprayed on to make the exact same boring reddish tone all over. The grain was obscured. It wasn't pretty at all if it got a mark on it, and couldn't be effectively fixed. And it came with a mark, remember?<br /><br />The top was very strong, but not stiff like solid wood would have been. The design was too long for the four legs, so it began to sag in the middle. I'd been to architectural school for ten minutes, so I knew all about "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creep_%28deformation%29" target="_blank">creep</a>." The top became swaybacked, and the drawers began to have a lot of trouble going in and out. <br /><br />My wife wrestled with that stupid, expensive dresser for a decade and more. It was her nemesis. She never complained to me about it, but I would hear the shriek of the drawers as she shoved them home, and the little grumble that followed. She would never say it, but I knew that I had gotten one chance to delight her, and I had fumbled it.<br /><br />So here it was. The Lord, or my neighbor who had too much furniture, would provide. It's a testimony to my wife's good nature that she would have put that battered dresser in our bedroom, just as you see it, and used it. She just wanted to keep her clothes in something that didn't shriek at her.<br /><br />My good fortune continued. My neighbor is minding two high school exchange students. One is from Denmark, and one is from Germany. You can tell they are foreigners because they are polite and speak perfect English. My neighbor directed the kids to carry&nbsp; the dresser over to our house. This was beginning to look like luxury to my eye. I was standing there on my neighbor's lawn, socializing, when those two foreigners appeared from my front door, following my wife. They were carrying that shaky Shaker dresser, and they plunked it on my lawn.<br /><br />My wife knew that sometimes the Lord provides a pretext, and that's as good as a reason.<br /><br />[read the conclusion of the<a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2016/04/happy-birthday-mrs-king.html" target="_blank"> story of treasure among the trash here</a>]SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-69225382234663017782016-04-18T10:25:00.000-04:002016-04-22T10:36:47.605-04:00How The Festival of Trash Saved My Bacon<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YzAJ1fg1EhU/VxTsMfc5fWI/AAAAAAAAF9I/sW5PUSUMS0457qVAr9RuCfcQ91wVPMXlgCLcB/s1600/festival%2Bof%2Btrash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YzAJ1fg1EhU/VxTsMfc5fWI/AAAAAAAAF9I/sW5PUSUMS0457qVAr9RuCfcQ91wVPMXlgCLcB/s400/festival%2Bof%2Btrash.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Most years, our little town has a Festival of Trash. They don't call it that, of course. If they called it The Festival of Trash, it would be more interesting, and become more popular, eventually turn into a rock-solid tradition, get famous, and make the town notable. Boosters of all kinds are continually trying to make the town notable with unfun fun runs and unjolly holiday fetes and parades with more people on the floats than the sidewalk. No one understands the organic nature of a successful tradition anymore. The Festival of Trash has potential. No one sees it but me, I guess. That's not an uncommon sensation in my life.<br /><br />Anyway, I like the Festival of Trash. Once a year, the public works department instructs the citizens to deliberately place threadbare sofas on the lawn on a specific day, instead of simply placing them on the front porch and sitting on them like the rest of the year. They suggest you place old mattresses, car tires, metal, brush, wood debris, and other similar detritus out on the curb as well. Town workers come around with front end loaders and trucks and so forth and pick it all up, and the town is made incrementally less tawdry.<br /><br />It's an early Spring thing. Early Spring is late spring if you're not in Maine. The stuff can be&nbsp; put out on the curb for up to a week before the appointed date, but most people use only the weekend before Festival of Trash Monday. It helps to generally declutter yards and homes in preparation for the impending good weather. I've lived here for 6 years now, and the good weather continues to impend. I'll be ready for it when it pends.<br /><br />Very little is ultimately left for the trash man, because everyone turns the occasion into a gigantic swap meet. It's considered very bad form to try to sell anything during the Festival of Trash. A few people have yard sales to coincide with the event, but they get snickered at. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk-stained couch for free? A kind of general reckoning happens. Like water finding its own level, vaguely useful things find vague uses in the eye of the beholder, and they get swapped without deals being struck. If you see it, you take it. Things that are no longer useful to one household get picked up by other households and put to use. I think it's grand.<br /><br />I find treasure, every year. We're stupid poor, so it's easy to find things we could use sitting on other people's curbs. The whole town is poor, so you don't find Faberge eggs or anything, but if you know how to make use of raw materials, there's always something.<br /><br />There are hardcore people that cruise the town in battered pickups towing rusty trailers. Some pick up anything metal, and bring their booty to the scrapyard for a meager payday, I imagine. We put out eight wood pallets left over from a year's worth of heating pellets for our stove. They were gone in about five minutes. If you live in wealthy suburbia, those pallets would be repurposed and upcycled into home and garden projects only slightly less useful and attractive than the pallets themselves. Here in Uppastump Maine, they'll be broken up and burned for heat, or burned in jolly campfires in the summer. I used to burn all the pallets I could get my hands on in my own furnace, but I don't burn firewood anymore, so I gave mine away to an anonymous someone who will get some use from them.<br /><br />In years past, we found a perfectly good 8-foot tall turned porch column. We used it to mount a birdhouse I made, and placed in our garden. Tree swallows have used it for three years running, and made our lives more interesting. A couple of years ago, we discovered four kitchen chairs out on someone's curb. My wife said she was tired of dragging chairs from the dining room into the kitchen whenever she wanted to sit down at the kitchen table. The chairs were cheap wooden things popular in the 1930s and 40s. They had a sort of Art Deco veneer on their flat backs, and disreputable padding and cloth on their slip seats.<br /><br />I put them in the car hole "for later," and the moisture down there made all the veneer peel off. One Christmas season, I sneaked them into my basement, re-glued the veneer, sprayed them with shellac and varnish, and reupholstered the seats with jolly coral-colored cloth with a bit of crewelwork on it. I had to complete the whole process in little bits and bytes every time my wife went to the supermarket, and hide everything in the interim. I eventually put them under the Christmas tree as a present for my wife, who never suspected a thing. We sit on those chairs every morning and look out the window at our tree swallow house, and know the pleasure of possessions that are part of the fabric of your life, not just stuff.<br /><br />I've made local handymen happy by putting out a busted tablesaw, and a broken compressor, and various other things that seemed valuable if you didn't know better, so I feel I've done my part. I must say, however, that this year's Festival of Trash made our lives better than I could have imagined. The Festival of Trash saved my bacon.<br /><br />[continue reading about <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2016/04/grass-is-good-as-carpet-anyplace-is-fine.html" target="_blank">treasure from the Festival of Trash here</a>]SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-34693527944972809042016-03-31T06:28:00.002-04:002016-04-18T09:28:16.280-04:00The Hills Are Alive, With the Sound of Unorganized Hancock<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4tFDjAD3GHg/Vvz6rDouApI/AAAAAAAAF8o/DrT0zqfo1yMwVeO1qonbKNKEx4OThyk2Q/s1600/z%2B105.5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4tFDjAD3GHg/Vvz6rDouApI/AAAAAAAAF8o/DrT0zqfo1yMwVeO1qonbKNKEx4OThyk2Q/s640/z%2B105.5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />My two little human noise machines will be appearing on <a href="http://www.z1055.com/" target="_blank">The Breakfast Club on Z 105.5</a> in Auburn, Maine this morning. That means we have to get up a half an hour before we go to bed in order to get there in time. This is the third time that <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UnorganizedHancock/" target="_blank">Unorganized Hancock</a> has brought their unique blend of not-uniqueness to the Matty in the Morning show. Everyone at the station is always really nice to us, and we're grateful for their friendship. The boys will be performing at a benefit event run by the station later on in the Spring, which will be announced on the show.<br /><br />Unorganized Hancock has added their original song, <i>Go, Go, Go</i>, to their <a href="http://unorganizedhancock.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank">Bandcamp</a> page. It's the official anthem of the 21st Century, because I said so. You can listen to it by pressing the Play button on this-a-here embedded player, and you can download a hi-def copy for just 99 cents, if you've got an iPod and 99 cents.<br /><br /><iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=2993185158/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://unorganizedhancock.bandcamp.com/track/go-go-go">Go, Go, Go! by Unorganized Hancock</a></iframe> If you want, you can listen to the show<a href="http://www.z1055.com/" target="_blank"> live over the Intertunnel on Z 105.5's feed</a>. If you don't happen to be glaring at my webpage when they're on, and you miss it, never fear. You can hear an archived copy almost immediately <a href="http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=133290&amp;cmd=tc" target="_blank">on the radio station's TalkShoe page</a>.<br /><br />[Update: Here's a <a href="http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/audioPop.jsp?episodeId=1067532&amp;cmd=apop" target="_blank">direct link to the Talkshoe recording</a> of the show]<br /><br />[Another Update: Many thanks go out to Sam from Astoria, Oregon, for his constant support of of our children's musical efforts. It is very much appreciated]<br />[Additional Update: Many thanks to Donald B. for overpaying for the boy's song on BandCamp. It is very much appreciated] <br />[More Update: Many thanks to longtime friend Kathleen M. from Connecticut for her generous support of our children's musical efforts. It is very much appreciated]SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474631.post-52129728723242587412016-03-28T17:24:00.000-04:002016-03-29T13:16:31.879-04:00Interestingly, 'Byzantine Forest of Metal Columns' Is the Name of My Supertramp Tribute Band. But I Digress<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9Jye9PzvE5U/VvmbNCCpSBI/AAAAAAAAF8Y/8e_Ywai4lZQPRYWQifTdoj6ftz9MT8xaQ/s1600/basement%2Bwindow.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9Jye9PzvE5U/VvmbNCCpSBI/AAAAAAAAF8Y/8e_Ywai4lZQPRYWQifTdoj6ftz9MT8xaQ/s640/basement%2Bwindow.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This is Sippican, tattered and torn<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That kissed the missus all forlorn<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That flushed the toilet one fateful morn<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That flooded the floor and smelled like scat<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That filled the blog with a monologue<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; About fixing the house that Jack built.<br /><br />I don't know who built my house. I imagine it was constructed by a great big crew of rough-and-tumble guys. In 1901, power tools were scarce, and 'strong backs with weak minds' were plentiful. I'm sure any number of them were named Jack.<br /><br />Of course the old expression about 'strong backs and weak minds' doesn't really hold in this case. When I began working in construction, back in the dark ages of the '70s, that appellation was reserved strictly for young people fresh on the job. The old guys knew plenty, and could do more math in their head than you can manage with a calculator.<br /><br />The jobs reserved for we newcomers, luxuriant of hair but challenged in all other areas, were always pretty simple : Dig a hole here. Roll this wheelbarrow full of concrete over 100 yards of rough ground and dump it in the form by the back door. Take the bundles of shingles off the truck and put them on the roof. Don't fall off the roof, it makes a mess. That's the only sort of direction you'd get.<br /><br />The payoff was that you got to work with people who knew their arse from their elbow. You would receive a certain amount of instruction. This instruction was supplied in the form of abuse, delivered in vibrant Anglo-Saxon, accompanied by a threat to be fired if you did whatever it was you did again. For the most part, you were required to be cautious, quiet, and "steal with your eyes" if you wanted to learn things. You would work right next to men who were very accomplished carpenters, painters, roofers, electricians, plumbers, landscapers, stonemasons, concrete finishers, or skilled at various other trades. They were also very accomplished drunks, and could show you a thing or two about getting yourself outside a quart of Four Roses while still being able to show up early for work the next day. They accomplished marvelous things, if you loved single-family houses the way I did, and if you paid attention, you could learn how to do it yourself.<br /><br />In theory, this monkey-see, monkey-do method is how home and garden shows on TV are supposed to work. There's a problem. The people featured on shelter shows are chosen because they are most likely to be entertaining to the viewers. The work is an afterthought. Even the venerable and useful <i>This Old House</i> has succumbed to this affliction. They spend fifteen hours picking out drapes, and fifteen seconds placing the foundation. The actual work happens in a blur in the background. You can't steal with your eyes by watching competent people, because there aren't any in front of the camera. If you watch Home and Garden TV, you might learn what is required to become a host on Home and Garden TV. That's about it. <br /><br />The 'steal with your eyes approach' eventually cultivates an ability to puzzle things out when confronted by a construction and maintenance problem, if you don't fall off the roof holding a bundle of shingles before you learn everything. If your view of the whole thing is informed by a long series of small glimpses of the underlying structure, you get a much clearer understanding of what's truly going on overall. This is also the basis of my interest in Victoria's Secret catalogs.<br /><br />So we've wandered hither and yon in the thesaurus talking about my clogged sewer pipe. It's long since time to cap the thing off and take stock of the whole megillah. I promise I won't exaggerate, and as I've said a million times before, I never resort to hyperbole. Anyway, here goes: I believe that the recalcitrant sewer line is the entire reason I was able to buy my home for less than 25 grand a few years ago, even though it seemed to be the only thing in the house that functioned, at least a little. It was not one of many things wrong with my house. It was THE thing wrong with my house. My house is a hovel, so that's saying something. Here's the theorem, proved:<br /><ol><li>It has obviously been many decades since the sewer line functioned properly. It's possible it never did. The vertical Drain-Waste-Vent line went directly into a clay pipe 'Tee' fitting underground. That's not a deal-breaker, but a sweep (a gently curved pipe) would have been better.</li><li>The Tee had a cleanout a few inches from the spot where the vertical pipe meets the horizontal tee. This cleanout couldn't be accessed because there was a solid granite foundation wall in the way.&nbsp;</li><li>Some former owners dug outside the foundation when the pipe didn't work, only to discover the pipe didn't exit the house that way. That excavation required the demolition of a ground-level rain gutter made from concrete. That allowed rainwater from the roof to filter down into the ground, where it makes a damp spot along the inside of the foundation wall. That made the basement perpetually damp, and it masked the water leaking out of the sewer pipe under the slab. </li><li>There <i>was</i> a clean out pipe for the sewer. It was on the opposite side of the basement. To my surprise, that's the side of the house where the main house drain actually left the building. In the mists of antiquity, someone broke off the clean out pipe underground, plugged it with a series of small fittings, and then installed some sort of sink. Then they buried all their piping in concrete. This made it appear as though the (long abandoned) sink location was at the end of a drain leading back to the main DWV vent pipe. Even if you weren't fooled, (I was) there was no way to use this clean out anymore. That means it was a practical impossibility to clean out the house drain and sewer line outside the house for forty or fifty years.</li><li>Once I dug up the sewer clean out, I used 70 feet of drain augur cable to clean out the pipe, and there was twenty feet of house drain before you got to the clean out. A 4" diameter pipe that's 100+ feet long will hold a lot of water (and other stuff). Lots of water would mean lots of weight pushing on an obstruction. If the obstruction won't budge, that much pressure will blow out all the oakum or tar or whatever was used to seal the joins between the 4-foot sections of sewer pipe. Given enough time, all the water leaked out of the pipe without pushing the 'solids" along.</li><li>The solids continued building up in the pipe. I think the pipe filled from the bottom up at first, with water flowing over the top a bit, and then eventually the only way for water to get by was to seep through the entire 100-foot run of muck. Not very efficient.</li><li>The entire sewer line became a defacto septic system. Almost nothing made it past the obstruction to reach the town sewer.</li><li>The leaky seams in the sewer pipe let water run out quickly enough so that the house could limp along for decades with the solids slowly building up in more and more of the pipe.&nbsp;</li><li>Once the unsuccessful exterior excavation ploy failed, someone dug up the pipe where the vertical DWV pipe entered the floor (and joined the clay Tee pipe). They broke the clay pipe, and they also lost or broke the plug that went in the unused end of the pipe.</li><li>They couldn't get another clay pipe to replace the one they broke, and Ferncos might not have been invented yet, so they put a wooden disc in the plug end of the Tee fitting, then stuck the broken bits around the DWV pipe, and covered it up with a concrete patch.&nbsp;</li><li>The wooden disc plug didn't last for long, and tree roots flourished at the now open ended pipe.&nbsp;</li><li>Lots and lots of water escaped the pipe right where it entered the floor.&nbsp;</li><li>The foundation and cellar floor was undermined by the water.</li><li>In the winter, the temperature reached 20-below-zero regularly.</li><li>The water froze, then heaved the foundation and the floor.&nbsp;</li><li>The original walk-out barn doors in the basement no longer worked as the foundation in the back of the house slumped.&nbsp;</li><li>Someone tried to fix the problem by pouring a makeshift concrete foundation on top of the sinking granite blocks that made up the foundation walls. The water just kept undermining the now taller wall.</li><li>The problem accelerated, and the foundation wall in the back of the house between the 8-foot-wide barn doors completely crumbled to dust.</li><li>Someone propped up the back of the house with a byzantine forest of metal columns, makeshift wood beams, and a few I-Beams that didn't do anything.&nbsp;</li><li>They also boarded up the entire back of the house, then insulated it, blocking out almost all sunlight and keeping heat out, while thinking they were keeping heat in. Where they thought the heat they were keeping in would come from is unknown. This accelerated the freezing, heaving, and subsidence of the remaining foundation walls and the floor.&nbsp;</li><li>The forest of hollow metal columns rested on the thin concrete floor, with no footings underneath, and the floor was constantly being undermined, so the columns punched holes in the slab instead of holding anything up.&nbsp;</li><li>This elicited the installation of ever more columns, all accomplishing not much. This coincided with the installation of ceiling fans, a hot tub, and a tanning bed in the house, because people think a house is for adding to, not for taking care of.</li><li>Eventually the back of the house dropped between 6 and 8 inches.&nbsp;</li><li>Because of the unusual framing technique used on the house when it was built, (thanks, Jack) the back wall of the house basically became detached from the rest of the house.</li><li>When the back wall of the house slumped, the rear roof eave slumped a lot, and the rest of the roof only slumped a little.&nbsp;</li><li>This pulled open the neglected roofing about 3 or 4 feet up from the roof edge.</li><li>This allowed water to enter the attic, and flow freely inside the four-story back wall of the house.&nbsp;</li><li>Water flowing inside the back wall destroyed the windows, so they boarded some of them up, too. This made it colder inside, prompting the owners to -- you guessed it -- install more ceiling fans.&nbsp;</li><li>The rain and snow entering the holes in the roof made the house's structure even worse. Leaks in the roof became big holes in the roof, which let in bees, hornets, carpenter ants, chipmunks, birds, squirrels, and bats. The holes never got large enough to let in any competent plumbers, however.</li><li>Once the owners ran out of light fixtures to replace with ceiling fans, and it was raining indoors regularly, they folded their tents in the night and stole away, leaving the local savings and loan holding the bag holding the mortgage.</li><li>Because a bank can't enter a house while they foreclose on it, all the plumbing pipes in the house froze solid, and were ruined. They were no great shakes anyway. The heating plant was an oil-fired boiler with hot water baseboard heat. All of this was full of water, froze solid, and was destroyed.&nbsp;</li><li>I came along looking for a cheap house. The banker realized there couldn't be two people as dumb as me walking the Earth, so they sold it to me before I sobered up.</li></ol>So, there you go, your honor. I hereby testify that someone flushed an unmentionable down the toilet, back when Eisenhower was president, probably, and it got stuck, and that little thing destroyed the sewer system, the foundation, the back wall of the house, the roof, the plumbing, and the heating system in the house. And I bought it. I plead insanity.<br /><br />So if you've been reading right along, you know that my son and I were able to repair the main house drain. If you're new around here, <a href="http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/search/label/plumbing" target="_blank">press on this Plumbing label</a> and read the posts in reverse order.<br /><br />I've been struck by the interest in this project from many corners of the Intertunnel, and the outpouring of support from people near and far, for which I am immensely grateful. It would seem to me that people want to hear more about fixing my house, so that is what I'll write about every chance I get. I definitely owe Jerry and Michelle a stirring conclusion to the tale of jacking up the back of the house. By gad, I'm going to do it.<br /><br />A SEWER LINE BENEDICTION:<br />My son and I cleaned off the nasty cables we used to augur out the sewer line, and then tromped over the snowbanks to load the rented tools into my truck to return them to the tool rental yard. We backfilled all the excavations and compacted the soil. We burned half our clothes, and my wife washed the rest. Twice.<br /><br />A week or so later, we got a generic notice in the mail from the town government, appended to a utility bill. It read:<br /><br /><blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><b>IMPORTANT SEWER NOTICE</b></div><div style="text-align: center;">If you experience a sewer backup, please notify the Public Works Department <i>before you hire a plumber</i>. After hours, call the Police Department.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><br />But, we didn't hire a plumber, so I guess we're all set. Life sure is a lot simpler when no one imagines anyone like you even exists.<br /><br />[Update: Many thanks to Robert B. from Chicago, Ill. for his generous contribution to our PayPal tipjar. It is very much appreciated]<br />[Additional Update: Many thanks to William O from Bandera, Tejas for his generous contribution to our PayPal tipjar. It is very much appreciated]<br />[Yet More Update: Many thanks to James H. from Lees Summit, Missouri for his kind words and generous contribution to our TipJar. It is very much appreciated]<br />[Still More Updates: Many thanks to Jerry and Michelle V. from Everson, WA for their unflagging support and friendship. It is greatly appreciated]SippicanCottagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14940797380578921776noreply@blogger.com24